Martha Kimes Archive

Although a lifelong U.S. Citizen, lately I find myself contemplating adopting Jolly Old England as my home away from home. Not because I’ve ever been to England, or because I know anything about England, or because the English have a reputation for having spectacularly straight and perfect teeth.

I want to be from old money, raised with a sense of entitlement, married to a doctor, living in a pre-war Classic 8 Park Avenue co-op, getting my hair blonded on a regular bi-weekly basis, dressing in tailored suits each day, and calling my parents “Mummy” and “Daddy,” even though I am a full-grown adult. I want to know what the insides of Dalton and Vassar look like and to be the kind of person who has her wedding announcement featured in the New York Times. I want to roll my eyes when my parents expect me to come spend yet another Saturday afternoon playing tennis with them at the country club, but I want to dutifully don my tennis whites and to drink a gin and tonic on the patio afterwards because that’s what’s expected of someone in my circumstances.

I had awaited Tim Gunn’s arrival for what seemed like months. While my bobblehead was on backorder, I checked and re-checking the status, certain that my emptiness could be filled by nothing other than Him.

A patient woman, I was not.

But you know what? All of the waiting and hand-wringing and sighing and obsessive order-status-checking that I did while I waited for him — it was worth it. Worth every little bit.

Because now I have my very own live-in fashion consultant. What more could a girl want? (more…)

Scott Baio was my first true love, and that bastard doesn’t even know it.

I was ten years old, and my bedroom walls were adorned with various posters of Chachi (for those were the days before he was Charles In Charge) purchased, undoubtedly, at Spencer Gifts. I saved my meager allowance and bought every issue of Tiger Beat magazine hoping to catch a glimpse of my beloved, and I was rarely disappointed.

Once upon a time, there was a couple named Karen and Ted, who were happily married. But it was time for them to have The Talk.

On a sunny April afternoon, Karen broached the delicate subject with Ted. “Ted,” she said. “Do you see that roller coaster awkwardly placed in the back of this picture we’re in? That roller coaster is a glaring metaphor for all of the pregnancy scares that I’ve been through over the years. I do believe that it’s time that we talked about permanent birth control. Permanent birth control for men.” (more…)

This weakness goes back a long time — as a child of seven or eight, I remember saving my paltry allowance for months in order to buy a pair of denim Mary Janes (?!?) that my parents refused to purchase.

I mean, it’s nice in some ways — you don’t have to bathe regularly if you don’t want to, you can work in a ponytail and sweatpants, you can just grab a Diet Pepsi from your own damn fridge four times per day instead of having to pay 65 cents a pop to the vending machine, you never have to poop in a public bathroom with the chance of one of your coworkers hearing you, and you don’t have to be intimately involved in any sort of office politics.

On the other hand, you’re alone. All alone. There’s no one to stick their head into your office to ask if you want to grab some lunch, no one to bump into in the hallway and chat with about your weekend, no one to stop you to say, “Hey — I love those shoes you’re wearing,” no one to roll your eyes at when told that the entire office will soon be going on a day-long off-site retreat to perform “team-building exercises” and “reconstitute organizational trust.” No one. Just you.

Sometimes it’s nice.

Sometimes it’s terribly lonely.

But you know what? Lonely no more. Because I now have a new officemate:

Martha Kimes

MARTHA KIMES is a writer and lawyer who lives in Phoenix. She is the author of a memoir entitled Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student (Atria Books, 2007). She has an unnatural fondness for beef jerky, impractical shoes, and bad reality TV. You can visit her at www.marthakimes.com or at MySpace, or e-mail her at [email protected]Subscribe to Martha Kimes's RSS feed